


and the world ended

by prosodiical



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Despair, Pre-VLR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7466553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phi is taken to a hospital. Junko sees an opportunity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the world ended

**Author's Note:**

> Written because after playing ZTD, there were so many parallels I just couldn't get this out of my head. Also because it'd be way easier to take over the world with robots if people were already going crazy.
> 
> There are some timeline shenanigans to fit them both in the same universe, but just assume DR takes place in 2028(?) instead of now.

There's a girl being wheeled through the hospital corridors.

She's encased in a glass chamber, covered in restraints with an IV in her wrist, and looks to be asleep. The nurses around her are talking, quiet but not too soft to hear, as they walk past: "Severe infection risk, we need the best on this - "

"Did you hear that, sis?" Junko says, smiling beatifically down at Mukuro in the bed. Mukuro is injured, as she so often is, scars of her last attempt at a fight. "Doesn't it sound interesting?"

"Yes, Junko," Mukuro says, eyes downturned, and Junko purses her mouth and sighs.

"You need more personality, dear sister," she says. "Your lack of enthusiasm gives me such despair." But it's a lovely feeling, the tight ball of annoyance and disappointment, the anguish of her constant, constant failures, and Junko smiles. "I hope you don't mind, but we'll be leaving."

Mukuro says, toneless, "Goodbye, Junko," as Junko waves cheerily back at her, leaving her room to follow the mysterious cart. 

It feels like a mystery, and Junko flutters her eyelashes and pouts childishly and then shoves a nurse into a cleaning closet, her fingernails like knives at her throat. "A-anything you want," the nurse whimpers, and Junko thinks she's so useless, she's absolutely perfect.

"That girl," Junko says, "the one in stasis, take me to her. I'm her sister, don't you remember?"

"O-Of course," the nurse stutters, "you're her sister. I-I'll show you the way."

The nurse leads her down the twists and turns of the hospital, and Junko keeps one hand in her pocket, fingers curving around the hilt of the knife she nabbed from Mukuro's boot; her sister's so predictable that way. "We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, would we?" Junko asks, sweetly, when the nurse looks like bolting, and she grabs her arm and presses the sharp edge of metal against her ribcage. "Please, I want to see my sister."

"Y-yes," says the nurse, and soon enough they're there, and Junko lets her go.

The girl is locked away behind glass and a clean room, empty but for a nurse starting to step into a hazmat suit. Junko pushes the door open and ties her hair in a neat ponytail as she enters, changing into scrubs while the nurse is still preoccupied, and says, "This seems pretty overkill, doesn't it?'

The nurse looks over at her, and Junko appears to pass muster. "Are you the replacement?" she asks, and Junko nods.

"Everything's hush-hush, though," Junko says. "Did they tell you anything more?"

"No," the nurse says, frowning with annoyance, "it's classified, apparently. She came from the Mars test site, but no one has any details apart from that."

"But it was just in the middle of the desert," Junko says, tasting intrigue on her tongue. "What sort of virus could come from there? It's not like there was a lab or anything..."

"Who knows," the nurse agrees, "but, protocol is protocol. Do you need a hand?"

Junko lets the nurse help her into her own suit, and they head into the medical chamber with two doors air-sealed behind them. It's bizarre, Junko thinks, with a heady sort of anticipation, as the nurse presses the button that opens the glass chamber the girl is sealed in and changes her IV to saline, as Junko unpackages a syringe to hand her and the nurse draws some blood. The girl's eyelids flutter, and Junko watches with fascination as she comes back to consciousness with a full-body start, and immediately her heart rate picks up, her breathing fast.

"Keep me in stasis," she says, too slow, her words slurring into one another, "cryogenesis. I'm an adult and in my right mind and I give full permission."

"We're here to study the virus you have," the nurse says, not unkindly. "Phi, wasn't it? A friend of yours said you had some new strain of something - "

"Radical-6," Phi says, "isn't to be played around with. It's airborne and extremely contagious. You won't be able to cure me, or anyone else - you have to put me in cryo. You're going to put me in cryo." She's panicking, despite the bland, tight expression on her face, and Junko can feel a smile crossing her face. "Maybe you're not infected yet, but if this gets out - "

"But isn't it lovely?" Junko says, a little curious. "You feel it, don't you - I can tell," she says, low and confidential. "The pain and anguish in your voice, that makes it shake so - whatever are you afraid of, dear Phi?"

Phi stares at her, uncomprehending, and Junko says, "The end of the world? Death to everything we know? The future you see - is it full of despair?" Junko sighs, envisioning a world so perfect, as the other nurse says:

"Wait, you're not supposed to be here, are you - "

The knife comes in extremely handy, Junko must thank her sister later. She'd slipped it in an outside pocket earlier, and now she slides it through the nurse's suit and between her ribs, leaving the hilt hanging out. The nurse has staggered back, staring at her with wide eyes and a beautiful, terrified despair, and Junko grins at her. "It's great, isn't it?" she says, "The despair, just eating away at you," and she reaches out and clips open the nurse's helmet, reveling in the way she's crying, begging, gasping. "I just want everyone to enjoy it the way I do."

Phi is struggling on the table, but still held down by the metal restraints they had kept her in. "You can't do this," she's saying, "you'll kill everyone. You'll die - "

"And won't my last moments be filled with the perfect despair, knowing it was all my fault," Junko says, and clutches a hand to her chest just thinking about it. "Maybe I'll infect my sister, and she'll die, too, knowing that it was me. Maybe I'll infect everyone I know." She closes her eyes, smiling. "You really know how to talk a girl up. Don't you want to play?"

"I won't let you," Phi says, and Junko pouts at her, disappointed.

"Well," Junko says, holding up Phi's vial of blood, "I hope this is quite as despair-inducing as you say." She glances over to the nurse, pursing her lips thoughtfully, and nods firmly. "Yes, I think this will do."

The doors prop open as Junko switches out Phi's IV bag for the previous one, some soporific that stops her swearing and struggling, and Junko shifts the nurse to the close wall, unseen from the exterior window. Then, it's simple enough to remove her hazmat suit and Junko wheels the cart through the halls in scrubs, up and down, through the children's ward and the long-term care and then, just to be sure, takes her to the emergency department and settles Phi in a wheelchair in the corner. She visits her sister then, hugs her careful and tight, and says, "Oh, wouldn't it be awful if you died, Mukuro?"

"Losing you would be worse," Mukuro says, eyes glinting, and Junko smiles, pulling out her phone and bringing up her contacts. They've had plans in the works for years, but Junko's always wanted the perfect catalyst - and now, she thinks, she has it.

"I think," she says, "my little class of children will be extremely excited to go to school tomorrow, don't you?"

(At first, it's the The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History; fifty years later, all people remember is Radical-6.)


End file.
